Endoscopes have a variety of useful applications in industry for penetrating and viewing locations which are not otherwise directly accessible. For example, to inspect the inside of a mounted jet engine without disassembling it, an endoscope may be inserted through an entry port into the engine, thereby permitting the viewer to look inside. The ability to inspect the inside of an engine is an especially important way of assessing damage, structural integrity, repair status, and general operability.
The endoscope is generally inserted through an external opening in the structure to be inspected, such as a bleed or ignitor port for a jet engine. However, the precise interior location to be inspected may not always be directly reached from the external port. For example, there may be obstacles, gaps, and turns along the pathway to the interior location which obstruct and prohibit penetration of the endoscope probe. To overcome this problem, typically a rigid, preformed guide tube has been inserted into the external opening for guiding the flexible endoscope, past obstacles and gaps, to the general area which is to be inspected. However for the endoscope to reach the precise inspection location, extensive and laborious manipulation of the tube and endoscope is still required. The guide tubes in the prior art do not provide a way of positioning the endoscope so that it enters the engine at a precise and fixed orientation with minimal amount of bend and subsequent manipulation by the technician.